Cyber security units to protect Russia’s nuclear weapons stockpiles

The IT systems of all Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles will be protected by a new team of anti-hackers, the Defense Ministry said after a year-long “hunting season” for programmers.

Special units of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (SMF),
responsible for the country’s nuclear weapons, will reduce the
vulnerability, should it be found, in their brand-new information
systems, according to the Defense Ministry’s spokesman.

"The SMF is adopting digital technologies in weapon and troop
control and is expanding the use of electronic document
management. Therefore, SMF staff are taking preventive measures
in upgrading cybersecurity: the process of creating teams
responsible for sustainable combat troop control amid
cyberwarfare is underway," Igor Egorov said on Thursday.

Titled “Sopka”, which in Russian stands for the
“System of Detection and Prevention of Computer
Attacks”, the team is set to thwart global hacker attacks.
Its specialists will be cooperating both with troops armed with
mobile land-based missile systems and with those equipped with
silo launchers.

The SMF are active users of cutting-edge technologies - arms,
weapons, and document flows are controlled with their help. The
security upgrade is aimed at avoiding hacking of this electronic
system, with e-management fully operating by 2020.

This spring, the Russian SMF’s five silo launchers were equipped
with armed guarding robots. Designed not only to detect and
destroy targets on their own, they can also gather intelligence
data.

In summer 2013, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said the
ministry had started a “big headhunt”, as programmers
were needed for the development of the software the army needs in
the following five years.